HISTORY OF THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND

FROM THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER I UNTIL THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER III

by S.M. Dubnow

A Project Gutenberg EBook

4. DISCRIMINATION IN MILITARY SERVICE

It seemed as if the Government was intent on making a
one-sided compact
with Russian Jewry: "We shall deprive you of all the
elementary rights
due to you as men and citizens; we shall rob you of the
right of
domicile and freedom of movement, and of the chance of
making a
livelihood; we shall expose you to physical and spiritual
starvation,
and shall cast you out of the community of citizens--yet
you dare not
swerve an inch from the path of your civic
obligations." A lurid
illustration of this unique exchange of services was
provided by the
manner in which military duty was imposed upon the Jews.
Russian
legislation had long since contrived to establish
revolting restrictions
for the Jews also in this domain. Jews with physical
defects which
rendered Christians unfit for military service, such as a
lower stature
and narrower chest, were nevertheless taken into the
army. In the case
of a shortage of recruits among the Jewish population
even only sons,
the sole wage-earners of their families or of their
widowed mothers,
were drafted, whereas the same category of conscripts
among Christians
were unconditionally exempt. [1] Moreover, a Jew serving
in the army
always remained a private and could never attain to an
officer's rank.

[Footnote 1: Compare p. 201.]

As if the Government intended to make sport of the Jewish
soldiers, the
latter were deprived of their right of residence in the
localities
outside the Pale where they had been stationed, and as
soon as their
term of service had expired, were sent back into the
territory of the
Russian-Jewish ghetto. Thus, even Nicholas I, was
out-Nicholased. The
discharged Jewish soldiers who had served under the old
recruiting law
enjoyed, both for themselves and their families, the
right of residence
throughout the Empire. [1] The new military statute of
1874 [2] withdrew
from the retired Jewish soldiers this reward for
faithfully performed
duty, and in 1885 the Senate sustained the
disfranchisement of these
Jews who had spent years of their life in the service of
their
fatherland. A Jew from Berdychev, Vilna, or Odessa, who
had served five
or six years somewhere in St. Petersburg, Moscow, or
Kazan, was forced
to leave these tabooed cities and return home on the very
day on which
he had taken off his soldier's uniform.

[Footnote 1: See above, p. 172.]

[Footnote 2: See p. 199 et seq.]

Yet, despite this curious encouragement of Jewish
patriotism, the
Government had the audacity to charge the Jews
continually with the
"evasion of their military duty." That a
tendency towards such evasion
was in vogue among the Jews admits of no doubt. It would
have been
contrary to human nature if people who were subject to
assaults from
above and kicks from below, whose right of residence was
limited to
one-twentieth of the territory of their fatherland, who
were robbed of
shelter, air, and bread, and deprived of the hope to
place themselves,
even by means of military service, on an equal footing
with the lowest
Russian moujik, should have felt a profound need of
sacrificing
themselves for their country, and should not have shirked
this heaviest
of civil obligations to a larger extent than the
privileged Russian
population, in which cases of evasion were by no means
infrequent. In
reality, however, the complaints about the shortage of
Jewish recruits
were vastly exaggerated. Subsequent statistical
investigations brought
out the fact that, owing to irregular apportionment, the
Government
demanded annually from the Jews a larger quota of
recruits than was
justified by their numerical relation to the general
population in the
Pale of Settlement. On an average, the Jews furnished
twelve per cent of
the total number of recruits in the Pale, whereas the
Jewish population
of the Pale formed but eleven per cent of the total
population. The
Government further refused to consider the fact that,
owing to
inaccurate registration, the conscription lists often
carried the names
of persons who had long since died, or who had left the
country to
emigrate abroad. In fact, the annual emigration of Jews
from Russia, the
result of uninterrupted persecutions, reduced the number
of young men of
conscription age. But the Russian authorities were of the
opinion that
the Jews who remained behind should serve in the Russian
army instead of
those of their brethren who had become citizens of the
free American
Republic. The "evasion of military duty" and
the annual shortage of a
few hundred recruits, as against the many thousands of
those enlisted,
was charged as a grave crime against that very people
towards which the
Government on its part failed to fulfil even its most elementary
obligations. Reams of paper were covered with all kinds
of official
devices to "cut short" this evasion of military
duty by the Jews. On one
beautiful April morning of 1886, the Government came out
with the
following enactment:

The family of a Jew guilty of evading military service
is liable to
a fine of three hundred rubles ($150). The collection
of the fine
shall be decreed by the respective recruiting station
and carried
out by the police. It shall not be substituted by
imprisonment in
the case of destitute persons liable to that fine.

In addition, a military reward was promised for the
seizure of a Jew who
had failed to present himself to the recruiting
authorities.

By virtue of this barbarous principle of collective
responsibility, new
hardships were inflicted upon the Jews of Russia. Since
the law provided
that the fine for evading military service be imposed
upon the _family_
of the culprit, the police interpreted that term
"liberally," taking it
to include parents, brothers, and near relatives. The
following
procedure gradually came into vogue. In the autumn of
every year, the
Russian conscription season, the names of the young Jews
who have
completed their twenty-first year are called out at the
recruiting
station from a prepared list. When a Jew whose name has
been called has
failed to present himself on the same day, the recruiting
authorities
issue an order on the spot imposing a fine on his family.
The police
then appear in the house of his parents to collect the
sum of three
hundred rubles. In default of cash, they attach the
property of the
paupers and have it subsequently sold at public auction.
In the case of
those who possess nothing that can be taken from them the
police insist
on their giving a signed promise not to leave the town.
Their passports
are taken from them, so that, not being able to absent
themselves from
town to earn a living, they are frequently left to
starve. If the
parents are dead or absent, the brothers and sisters of the
culprit, and
then his grandfathers and grandmothers are held
answerable with their
property.

Thus, a large number of Jewish families were completely
ruined, merely
because one of their members had emigrated abroad, or, as
was frequently
the case, had surrendered his soul to God in his beloved
fatherland
itself, and the relatives had failed to see to it that
the dead soul was
stricken from the recruiting lists. Yet, despite all
these efforts,
there still remained a considerable number of uncollected
fines--"arrears," as they were officially
termed--to the profound regret
of the Russian Jew-baiters, who had to look on while the
victims were
slipping unpunished from their hands.